


Break Him Down

by poesparakeet



Series: The Sign of Three and a Half [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Johnlockary - Freeform, Tickling, he was a rubbish big brother, pre johnlockary, ticklish!Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 01:48:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1286647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poesparakeet/pseuds/poesparakeet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary's pregnancy leads to a level of boredom that finds Sherlock at the mercy of mischievous Watsons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break Him Down

**Author's Note:**

> The beginning of a series that I am planning to write with my OT3, so stay tuned. ;) Also, I'm a feedback whore, so do me a solid and give me something to smile about on bad day.
> 
>  
> 
> You can reach me via tumblr for chatting, prompts, praise at www.poesparakeet.tumblr.com
> 
> Update: I've started writing original tickling fiction. That blog can be found at   
> www.prudence-please-tickle.tumblr.com  
> I published my first ebook recently, and I'm pretty proud! There's a link on the sidebar of the porn blog I just mentioned.

John thought, as the silver steam from his tea wafted up and disappeared near the shaded ceiling of a new sort of baker street flat, that silence was golden. That attitude was counterintuitive to what he had come to know as a core part of himself, but even adrenalin junkies get tired, and John was exhausted. The last two and a half weeks had seen the climax of the sort of story that can only take place in the rare combined presence of multiple Holmeses, the egos of those Holmeses that must be mentioned as entities in their own right, and an increasingly pregnant spouse.

Make that an increasingly pregnant and difficult spouse. Mary didn’t seem to enjoy or dislike being pregnant as much as she was simply annoyed by the necessary restrictions it set upon her. The most recent of those was an inability to tie her own shoes. She’d told him it wasn’t funny before she’d even explained what the problem was, sitting in the chair by the door with one foot half way into her sneaker. When John had knelt down to tie them for her, she said only that if he laughed her revenge would be swift and fierce. He hadn’t laughed, because these days she could get Sherlock on her side more often than not, and together they were exceptionally unpredictable. The stress of keeping Mary calm, Sherlock out of trouble and Mycroft… whatever state Mycroft fancied himself at at the time made John relish the comfortable silence of their flat. 

Mary was bored. All of her time lately had been spent reading books, watching telly and trying not to come up with half baked excuses to leave the flat, into the humanity-soaked streets of London where the smell of exhaust always made her regret the excursion. And vomit. Mostly vomit. So she didn’t do much, except spend time alone. The most recent case her daring duo handled had involved little to no in flat activity, and since she couldn’t leave their child (or her turning stomach) with Mrs. Hudson, she was excluded from it. Oh, they kept her informed, but she had a feeling that some of the stories were edited to include thugs who were mysteriously unarmed and minor fights that didn’t match the bruises they left behind. She might have expected such needless protective behavior from John, not patronizing but guarding, behavior born from the instinct to first do no harm. She would never have expected it from Sherlock.

The detective was on the sofa, yet simultaneously somewhere very far away. He was half reclined against the arm, impossibly long legs stretched out in front of him, fingers tented and eyes still. In his mind palace? She wasn’t sure. Despite the fact that they had all but combined their living quarters Sherlock rarely did this in 221 C, choosing instead to get lost in thought in the silence of B. B was currently sitting empty with all the windows open in an attempt to air out the fumes from an experiment that had ‘ended unexpectedly’. That unexpected side of Sherlock seemed to have remained in B.

To see Sherlock so still, so contained, was fascinating. Mary cautiously placed her bare feet on the worn rug and crept closer to him. She knelt at this shoulder, peering as though examining the details of a painting. She felt his awareness of her shift, but he didn’t move, not even his eyes changed focus. His breathing was steady.

“I wouldn’t.” John mused from his place by the window. “You can’t get him out of that state without a stick of dynamite, and he gets stroppy when you try.”

Mary just turned and smiled at him, and John thought that the golden silence of the flat would be broken soon. He should have known, after so long cohabiting, that she might take it as a challenge. Sherlock’s moods never seemed to bother Mary, and his tantrums she found downright amusing. 

She began by tapping Sherlock’s shoulder, then tugging on an errant curl. Taking a seat wedged next to him on the edge of the couch so she could see his face better, she pressed his tented fingers between her palms, then poked his cheek. 

There was a hard rap of wood on wood at the flat’s door. It got Mary’s attention, but not Sherlock’s. John set his tea down on the windowsill and heaved himself out of his chair to answer the door.

It was Mycroft. Sherlock remained entirely uninterested, and Mary went back to watching him. Mycroft, at best, was a temporary distraction. At worst, he had some loose end the needed tying up, or perhaps a whole new case. Perhaps if she ignored him with Sherlock, he would go away. She grabbed Sherlock’s hands and manipulated his fingers with her own. 

There was a short silence as John waited for either Sherlock or Mary to tell Mycroft hello, but they seemed to be in their own respective worlds. 

“John.”

“Mycroft. Come to see the new place?”

“No. I assumed from the high air flow, metallic smell and chemical burns on the ceiling that my brother was taking refuge in here.”

John nodded, eyebrows up and mouth twisted into a smile that seemed reserved for the Holmes brothers. “He is. Is this about the case, then?”

“No.” Mycroft looked sour for a moment. “Despite having the two of you involved, the maneuver was completed without further complication. I wanted to speak to him about our parents’ anniversary. They want to have dinner, Watson’s included.”

Both John and Mycroft glanced over to the sofa, where Sherlock continued to sit still as a mannequin while Mary rested her chin on his steepled fingers, nose to nose with the detective. The two men at the door looked at each other again, and John deadpanned “I think Sherlock’s busy at the moment.”

Mycroft’s eyes narrowed and he bared his teeth in a mockery of a smile. “Entertaining your wife?”

John was unimpressed by the implication. He nodded solemnly and agreed “Looks like.”

The elder Holmes puffed out a dramatic sigh as the sharp sound of high heels coming up the stairs after him sounded from the hallway. “I don’t have time for this today, I’m afraid. Tell Sherlock he has to come, and I’ll text him the restaurant. Tell Mary that the two of you are cordially invited, and I’ll send a car so you needn’t take a cab. Good day, John.”

When he turned around his assistant was waiting and looking anxious. Mycroft started to follow her out, but stopped short in the door frame. “Oh!” He glanced over his shoulder at the sofa one more time. “Mary? Scapulae.” Then the door closed behind him.

There was a curious pause. John and Mary looked at each other, then back at Sherlock for some sort of explanation. To their surprise, he had finally broken out of his trance and was glaring furiously at the door. “MY-CROFT!” He barked, though the only answer was a second bang as the front door of 221 shut tight. 

Mary looked fascinated, still hovering over Sherlock. “What? Shoulder blades?” Sherlock leapt up off the couch, stomping his way toward the kitchen, but Mary was right behind him. “What am I supposed to do with his scapulae?” She half chased Sherlock around to the other end of the sofa, herding him away from his original destination.

“Mary, no.” He said it firmly as she danced closer to him in an attempt to touch his back. Sherlock was moving faster than her at the moment, though, since he wasn’t growing a small human in his abdomen. She chased him again, circling the couch, before he turned around to face her. “MA-RY!” He scolded in perfect harmony with his earlier admonition of his brother. He held her wrists lightly. John was watching the scene with a little amusement, having picked up his tea again to start sipping it like someone at a dinner theater.

Mary just smiled wickedly, a wolf showing teeth to the too confident prey. Then she grabbed the front of his dressing gown and twisted, using her own weight to whip Sherlock behind her where the arm of the sofa took him at the knees and he went tumbling face first into the cushions. Mary cackled and immediately rushed to hold him down, perching herself on top of him. She smirked at John where he was leaning against the mantelpiece chuckling as his wife straddled his best friend in their living room. Sherlock was squirming, but Mary was highly trained and more than capable of taking advantage of the extra weight she was carrying to help pin the detective down. Sherlock could fight, but for him that usually meant highly effective attacks meant to incapacitate. He found he didn’t have much in his arsenal that could get him away from his friend without hurting her.

Mary was touching his back again,using her palms to find the tactile shift between muscle and bone. She poked hard right between the shoulder blades, then at the protruding bones themselves. Sherlock let out a growl of frustration as he continued to try and slither out from under Mary. “I’m not sure I get it.” Mary mused conversationally to her husband. “What about his scapulae makes him come out of his hidey-head?” John burst out laughing while Sherlock huffed indignantly.They had only used the term ‘hidey head’ thus far in the quiet privacy of their bedroom, which any married couple would agree is a place so flooded with inside jokes that normalcy seems to fade into the distance.

“Mind palace!” Sherlock growled, still trying to pull himself out from under Mary. He stretched out one arm to try and grab the sofa for leverage, but when Mary dragged her finger nails across his upper back the arm shot down again. It was a subtle movement, and Mary almost moved on.

“Wait!” John stopped her. “What was that?” He moved to lean over the back of the sofa to peer at his struggling friend.

“What was what?” Mary flapped her hands, then hovered them over Sherlock like predatory claws, watching the detective closely to try and see what her husband had that she had missed.

“He got twitchy there for a second. Pulled his arm down, he’s guarding-”

“NO I am NOT.” 

“Yes you are. Are you hurt?”

“No.”

Mary stopped the bickering with a sly hum. “You know I think the scapulae are an off switch.”

“An off switch?” John feigned puzzlement, continuing to converse with his wife as though they were examining an x-ray an not an irate consulting detective who could hear them and seemed to grow more agitated by the moment. 

“Yes, an off switch.” Mary replied, crawling her fingers up Sherlock’s back like spiders, which definitely led to increased squirming. Her voice changed to a teasing pitch. “An off switch for that fabulous self control of his, isn’t it Sherlock?” She started to spread gentle, nibbling pinches along the ridge of the shoulder blade, and Sherlock immediately went stiff, back arching in an attempt to run away from the touch. Sherlock was no longer growling and huffing, but instead taking deliberately steady breaths through his nose, eyes locked on a spot near the end table while his lips pursed.

“Oh, I think you’re getting somewhere.”

“John.” Sherlock hissed, but the doctor ignored his scolding, shifting to get better look at his face. The detective looked flushed and he was now glaring at his examiner. 

Meanwhile Mary had started to wriggle her fingers maddeningly over the taught skin of his shoulder blades, moving one hand over the span of them from one side to the other. She was thrilled when this resulted several spastic twitches and a strangled curse.

John was still trying to watch Sherlock’s face. “Oh! I think he’s breaking!” Sherlock’s body language made that clear, even though he had now buried his face into the sofa cushions. John looked up at his wife and they shared a smile.

Mary made a sharp grab for the detective’s ribs, to be rewarded by a distressed cry half muffled by the aging sofa. “Oh! Does the switch turn all of your ticklish spots on, Sherlock?” Her other hand darted to his neck, which he immediately tried to block access to with his shoulder. “Just give in Sherlock, it will be so much easier that way.” Her eyes sparkled at John, glad to see that he was as amused by this as she was. Some men would be too jealous for such games between their wives and another man, but not stable, trusting, rock solid John. At least, certainly not when the other man was Sherlock, who Mary was currently using all her strength to try and flip over. Sherlock was fighting her hard, though, and she found she couldn’t quite do it. “Doctor.” She grunted, and John gave her a wide, close-lipped smile that said he accepted her invitation into this game. “The… patient… is… being… difficult!” She sighed, loosening her grip on Sherlock’s arm. 

“Is he? Let me help with that.” John suddenly reached out and snatched Sherlock’s foot out of the air where it had been flailing, ignored during Sherlock’s escape attempts. As quick as a kingfisher he had an ankle gripped, leg pinned against the back of the sofa, a wicked smile in his eyes. He started to run two teasing fingers down the arch of Sherlock’s socked foot.

“John!” The rebuke was dulled by the strangled voice projecting it, half an octave too high and immediately cut off before any other sound could sneak out. In the brief struggle to flip him over Sherlock had regained a little self control, but it was clearly failing fast.

“So close!” Mary cheered, bringing both hands on instinct to Mycroft’s original clue and the starting point of her invasion into Sherlock’s personal space. Sherlock started to shake, face hidden completely in the cushions. Mary was starting to think that was all they would get out of him when Sherlock suddenly squawked and dissolved into laughter. 

“No Johohohohn don’t!” Mary turned to look over her shoulder to see her husband had switched tactics, digging fingers under Sherlock’s toes, a weak spot that she knew from experience that John shared. Sherlock’s laughter came out in a stream, a sound she had never heard from him before, but it was still muffled by the cushions. The Watsons exchanged a glance that said that sound needed to be exposed immediately. Mary immediately dug viciously into Sherlock’s ticklish back while John slung his upper body over the back of the sofa and grabbed Sherlock’s other leg. 

It was some combination of John’s heaving leverage and Sherlock’s frantic attempts to protect himself from Mary’s onslaught that flipped Sherlock over onto his back. Mary immediately wrapped her hands around the front of his ribcage and set about the work of cracking him open.

Sherlock was already laughing, though, and it seemed that as long as they kept him that way he couldn’t quite hide from the sensation any longer. “Mary!” He scolded through frantic laughter. “St-stohohop!Stop it this instahahant!” The last bit would have sounded cross if it hadn’t the squeak in his voice from his attempts to hold his laughter in. Sherlock’s hair was a ruffled mess, and he was still trying to hide his face but was having no luck. 

“Oh…” Mary teased. “Isn’t it cute how he thinks he can order us around, John?”

“Clearly his ego is having no trouble expressing itself in this state. Let’s see if we can make him beg, hm? Twice, maybe.” John said all of this with a strait face while trying to get control of his friend’s legs.

Sherlock was grabbing at Mary’s wrists with such desperation that one might think she was putting knives in his ribs instead of tickling him. She pulled back quickly, yanking her arms to her own chest. Sherlock fell for it immediately, reaching for her wrists and exposing himself. Mary’s hands dove under his arms, and his laughter became frantic. “NO! No noho no Mahahary DON’T!” It definitely wasn’t an order anymore. Sherlock was rapidly losing coherence and the ability to defend himself, his arms batting uselessly at Mary’s firmly planted hands as her fingertips writhed under his locked down arms. “Stohohop!”

“You heard him Mary, don’t stop!” John knew the semantics would infuriate Sherlock, but his friend was laughing too hard, back arched and eyes shut tight, to even throw him a glare. John finally managed to grab one of Sherlock’s legs, heaving the entire appendage until the knee was hooked over the back of the sofa, shin pinned under John’s weight. John started to pinch curiously at Sherlock’s knees, to a delightful reaction from the detective.

“NOHOHOHO!JOHOHOHOHN!DON’T!PLEASE!” The word brought a pleased silence to the room, save Sherlock’s now near hysterical laughter.

“Oh! Begging from Sherlock Holmes! What was that?” John teased.

“PLHEHEHEASE! PLEHEHEASE STOP!” Sherlock’s laughter hadn’t gotten quieter, but his voice was getting hoarse.

“That’s twice.” Mary reasoned.

John looked dissatisfied. “He was dead for three years, not to mention all the other shit he’s put me through. I dunno if I’m ready to stop just yet. I think I need moooore begging!” He said the last two words with the flourish of a television host before launching a devastating attack on Sherlock’s knee, scratching at kneecaps and squeezing the surrounding muscle. Sherlock’s laughter renewed in intensity, especially when his strength took that moment to wane and allow Mary to launch a more targeted attempt by withdrawing one of her hands and using it to shove one of his arms over his head. She went for the kill, delicate scratches to his armpit through his shirt. 

Sherlock let out a little wail of despair through his hysteria. “NOHOHOhoho stohohohop. Stop please! Ahahaha, no, please, mehehehercy!” 

The detective’s cackling didn’t lighten one bit when John, using his weight to pin Sherlock’s leg and one hand to tickle him, reached into his pocket for his phone and flipped the camera on. Mary tusked at him, but he just grinned back at her. “Something for Greg’s secret collection, maybe?” 

Sherlock’s eyes were squeezed shut, tears at their corners, and laughter was pouring out of him like a faucet with too much water pressure. He didn’t have the equipment to let it all out. As a result he did not notice that John was recording his ordeal at all, much less the admission that it would be added to Lestrade’s ‘behave at the crime scene or else’ stash of videos. He notice when Mary let his arm go and went back to his ribs, though, digging her thumbs in right under his pectorals and making him shriek.

“NO no no JohnMary plehehehease no mohohore, nohoho more, oh please! Mercy!” At that point Sherlock seemed to lose his voice, falling into gasping laughter and small sounds that might have been the beginnings of words. Mary stopped, sliding off of Sherlock, and John let his leg go. They both curled up in the nearby armchair, Mary in John’s lap, and waited for their friend to regain his composure. Sherlock’s laughter died off into giggles before he finally managed to take a few deep breaths and relax. He immediately rolled over to face the back of his sofa, knees curling up in front of him. The earlier silence of the flat drew nearer.

“Is he pouting?” Mary teased from her perch on her husband.

“I think so” John replied.

“NOT POUTING.” Sherlock insisted, not moving from his pouting position. “Plotting. Your downfall.”

“Aw…” Mary made an exaggerated pout in Sherlock’s direction. “I don’t think he’s very happy with us.”

“Nonsense.” John answered. “He loves us, he made a speech about it and everything. I’m sure it’s in the wedding vids.” Mary’s stomach growled loudly, and they both rose to make their way to the kitchen, but not before passing Sherlock. John ruffled his hair and Mary planted a kiss on his cheek.

“No. I hate you. Eastern Europe!” Sherlock affirmed upon the hair ruffle. When Mary’s kiss was planted he exclaimed “I am going to eastern Europe because I hate you both so much.”

Both of the Watsons laughed nearly as hard as Sherlock had moments ago.


End file.
